Why do some cries energize you & other cries deplete you?
Something extraordinary happened this week. Over 6,000 people engaged with my video, “true power comes from revering & tending the bodies that experienced harm.” I received so many personal messages & in person thank yous. It has received more responses than many things I’ve ever shared.
Yet several people expressed a sense of overwhelm around their own healing journey & did not know if they “had the energy to come heal.” I was speaking about this with one of my energy teachers. She said, “a lot of people have not yet learned how to stay present when they express anger & grief, so they can get lost when they try to clear those emotions. By the end they feel more tired.” I responded, “yes I’ve noticed this too! I’ve been studying this for years as a grief ritualist. Why do some bodies & some group rituals result in depletion, while others increase vitality & clarity?!”
Many people who guide ritual have not learned what Sobonfu Somé taught us, how to make grief revitalizing! I share more about this specifically in my presentation at the Grief Mentoring Speaker Series. If you guide grief rituals, please watch this.
On the personal level, there are energy skills we can learn so expressing emotions is energizing rather than depleting! Here are some of the basic energy skills:
grounding: giving extra energy over to the earth so we have the right amount of energy we can organize & integrate within our own nervous system
me/not me: discerning what is mine vs what is someone else’s
core: a felt sense of your essence, life force, & purpose
edge: healthy energetic boundaries
shout doubt: capacity to amplify your power to shout out doubt
spiritual resource: felt sense of support from the unseen realms, making the resource bigger than the discomfort
When our bodies learn these skills (which takes some time & repetition), we can move emotion in a way that clears us & increases our aliveness. We don’t get lost in the emotion, or depleted. Once we grow our “basics” our whole relationship with emotions transforms. We can access the wisdom the emotions are pointing to without depletion. It actually nourishes us to move these emotions.
Sometimes people feel so tired they want to rest. But without these “basics” they may be unconsciously going into collapse rather than a restorative rest. When this happens the body does not recharge in the same way. Practicing basics helps us rest better.
How can you tell if you are collapsing or resting? Notice how you feel the next day. If you feel revitalized, clear & inspired the next day your body got to metabolize & rest! If you feel foggy, still tired & life feels effortful, then your body may have gone into collapse. There’s nothing wrong with you if you have not learned these skills yet! Most of us were not taught these basic energy skills. Any body can learn these skills!
At this moment in our collective when there is so much to respond to & so many emotions, these skills are even more important. You may learn these skills with me on Fridays. I offer an online Presence practice 11 am - 12 pm pst. You may also learn them with Teeni Dakini or Lynda Caesara. These are some of the most life changing skills I’ve experienced.